Page 1 of Prophet
Chapter One:The Waiting
Prophet
I let out a long breath of frustration as I stared down at the leather I’d been braiding. A hobby of mine. My dad had said, many an ole cowboy had a thing for making bridles, leads and almost anything out of leather. Me… I just liked the feel of it in my hands, as it somehow calmed me down in an odd way. Like one of those stress balls I saw in Justice’s office. Funny about that. Bikers liked leather too.
My father had taught me many things in life. How to rope, break a horse and brand a calf. He set me on a horse at 3 years old and I learned to ride on one alone by the time I was four. Then he set me on a motorcycle when I was twelve. I fell in love with that immediately. I grew up in the Requiem MC right alongside my cousins. I lived and breathed the MC life. Ours wasn’t like one percenter clubs, we did not have booze in the club or Biker Bunnies. It was a business mostly and assorted ones at that.
Jarret Walker owned a whiskey distribution company and it made millions. All Members worked in it right on the assembly line, in the recipe room, batch room, bottling and so on. Then we worked in offices too. Justice owned a law firm and we were even required to work there for one week a month in suits no less. We learned to be business savvy. On the other end, he also sent us out to be on the streets so we would have those smarts too. We would cruise up and down the city of Houston, one of the most dangerous cities in the world on our cycles, just to be seen and to perhaps be challenged. Rifle range and shooting practice was a monthly requirement. We all knew how to box, kick box and we learned assorted martial arts. Even dueling with knives or other hand weapons was a strict requirement.
In other words, we all learned about working in an office cubicle on a computer, we learned business, law, whiskey making and hand to hand combat. We were even trained in how to win a barfight of all things.
Yet, there was one thing I never learned. How to have an actual relationship with a woman. I’d dated and I’d tasted. I wasn’t pure as the driven snow by any means. But I did make a vow to never sleep with the woman I intended to settle down with. Not until we actually got engaged or set down some kind of serious understanding that we would get married. The one flaw with that goal was that I never found the one I wanted to be with forever.
Until now.
Jewel. The one I rescued and carried to freedom. At first, I wondered if it was that. I had rescued her, so I therefore felt responsible for her. After a week though, I knew better. The woman could enter the room and I just felt lighter. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her either if she was within sight. I thought it was just attraction because damn, she was fucking beautiful. Too gorgeous for me in fact. Yeah, she was a stripper but after several conversations, I found out she had been saving up for college. She wanted to become a school teacher of all things. With her looks, no boy in their right mind would be able to hear anything she said in class. She was that stunning to look at.
She sought me out a lot too. I was someone she could talk to, she’d said. I felt the same way as we had quite a few conversations. One of those talks still bothered me. She had told me Deacon had definitely stalked her. It had been more than him just hitting on her. Much more. She’d confessed about how he was in the parking lot every time she came out after her shift was over. He would approach her even after she told him to leave her alone. She had also seen him when she would be out shopping or going to the gas station. He had been everywhere she went for the last three weeks. She confessed to me about how she feared him as he had said, she was his and no one else’s.
I now believed it had been pure coincidence that he sent those men to her apartment the night Cinnamon arrived. Later on, Cinnamon had claimed she had checked the street to make sure there wasn’t anyone there for at least ten minutes before she approached Jewel’s apartment. This further convinced me that Deacon had sent men after Jewel and not Cinnamon. She had been just an extra reward.
Not to mention all that he had done for O and had helped to do to the Walkers. This war was all about family. Even the fact that he was a Walker as well. I wondered if he knew he was a Walker. O had been a pathological liar, we all knew this. Did she ever tell him that he was Bronson Walker’s son? Or did it matter to him? We didn’t know.
Honestly, it didn’t matter who he was. I knewwhathe was. A killer and most likely, he was as psycho as his mother. Every day, a group of the Rebel Saints would go out and search Ramton for the man or any of his Russian soldiers. They also searched farms in the county and used tech equipment to search below ground as well. O had many underground lairs according to Liv’s interrogation of the man I injured. He finally talked but by the time he did, the place where he said Deacon hid was empty.
One step ahead. That was what Talon said. I had to wonder if it had been a coincidence that Deacon had left the Connor House before we moved in to get Glory. Did he know somehow? O always planned steps ahead and we all assumed Deacon did the same. We also figured he was probably out of his mind over what happened to his mother and that meant he wasn’t leaving the area until he found her. I snorted.Well good luck asshole, as she was six feet under.
I did make note that the odd occurrence of O’s suicide by knife had freed Cinnamon. She didn’t look scared anymore or nervous. And damn, if Redemption ever looked this happy before. If so, I sure as hell didn’t remember it. I shook my head. He had always been surly at best. Arrogant and bossy. Not that I disliked him at all, he was like he was and I did admire him in many ways.
The man was even harder to live with now though. Constant banter and jokes. A ready smile and lots of conversation. Of all things I believed I would never say, I had to admit it…Redemption had become too happy. Was there such a thing? Maybe. I did know I would be there on Happy Mountain too if I managed to get with Jewel. The thing about that was she had made the same vow as I did. Abstinence. Not until she was married. That went a bit further than mine. I’d slept with girls but it had always been with the understanding that it would be a temporary event with no strings.
For me, Jewel was not temporary. I wanted her to be a permanent woman in my life. I wanted her, period. I’d had dreams of her almost every night since I met her. Being a man made it harder, I suppose and hard I was. Cold showers didn’t help, nothing did. I tried everything. I didn’t want to see her because it made it worse. Then again, Ihadto see her as she was all I thought about. Damned if I do, Damned if I don’t. I kept telling myself to just wait. For her to make a move. And that was becoming so hard to do every fucking time she touched me. Just her touching my hand innocently would send me off into a land most men had trouble with.Blue Balls Land. I snickered to myself as I’d never traveled there before I met her.
I had to stop thinking about having sex with her though as it made it hard to focus. I needed to make sure she would be safe. So along with my cousins and the Louisiana Walkers, I wanted this Deacon to be caught. The man was after… my girl. Yes, I had to face it. I needed to make her mine. I hadn’t come up with a way to make that clear to her yet. For a girl like her, you shouldn’t move too fast or she would turn and run. I already figured that out. I’d been taught patience by my dad. Or at least he tried to teach me. I’d never been good at it. When my mom passed away, I refused to sit by her bedside and wait. I ran away from home and stayed gone for a week and I had only been ten at the time.
I’d learned the patience to break a horse from wild to saddle ready. I would croon to them and talk quietly to them if they were truly from the wild. I had a way with animals but people? I wasn’t so good with them. Jewel was special and she wasn’t wild. I needed an approach that would be a patient one. Like I said, I’d never been taught how to court a girl. I laughed to myself. Such an old concept. Old fashioned as fuck. How did a modern day cowboy-biker go about doing such a thing?
Looking up, I saw her coming toward me. I’d been sitting on one of the benches all this time just thinking about her really.
“Hey Prophet.” She smiled and sat next to me.
I couldn’t help it, I smiled back. She just brought a soothing vibe with her, but at the same time, I lusted after her and that wasn’t relaxing.Again, damned if—
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I nodded and gripped the leather I’d been running my fingers over for the last twenty minutes. “I’m good.”
Shaking her head, she put her hand over mine. “Tell me the truth, okay? I always want the truth.”
I scoffed and shook my head. No way. If I did that, she would get up and leave then avoid me. I couldn’t take that. “It’s the waiting. It’s killin’ me.” There, I told her as much truth as I could.
“I know. I feel the same way.” She shivered. “Like I’m a rabbit in a hole and the big bad wolf is sniffing at the entrance.”
I instantly took her hand in mine. “You are safe and as long as I’m around, you will stay that way.”
“Thank you for that, but you will just ride off into the sunset one day.”
I looked over at her. “That’s Clint Eastwood, not me.” I smirked.
